updated 09:30 pm EDT, Thu August 7, 2008

Lotus iNotes for iPhone

In late January, IBM revealed it was considering the iPhone as a viable platform for its web-based Lotus Notes, and MacNN has revealed that the plans are drawing to a close, with a late 2008 release in mind. While Apple included support for Microsoft Exchange in its latest v2.0 iPhone operating system update, it still lacks several key collaboration features that IBM hopes to supplement through the so-called Lotus iNotes. No specific release date is planned.

IBM's Lotus iNotes is scheduled to bring many new features to iPhone users, such day-at-a-glance calendars, email with attachment sending capabilities, quick contact creation, information on contacts and groups, and reading email with extraneous content hidden or show. These functions are based around IBM's Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure, and are said to provide a "rich Apple iPhone user experience."

Lotus iNotes appears - at least at the moment, since IBM considers the screenshots conceptual - to have a sparsely populated field of buttons on each screen, allowing for easy navigation, so the user is not required to be tenuously precise. IBM presents the interface in Safari, but with a familiar, functional interface.

When last seen in January, IBM noted it was then at a developmental stage, "not something that [is] ready to go out and market or launch," this release insinuates that the company is close to a finished product. Some viewed the news as a boon, while others panned it, saying the demographics of Lotus Notes and the iPhone were so radically different.

While it is not the first solution to Lotus-using iPhone owners' problems, it is the first official solution. PocketMac preceded Lotus iNotes, with its app GoBetween for Lotus Notes, and Sybase with iAnywhere Mobile Office. Both solutions included support for several of Lotus' features, but had some missing features, such as corporate directory usage, or calendar information.

The statement about different demographics between Notes and iPhone makes absolutely no sense. Lotus Notes is the second largest collaboration package out there, after Exchange. By virtue of being so big, it is definitely impossible to stereotype it in any way. In other words, its demographics are clearly all over the place and include virtually all of the potential iPhone users.

My workplace uses Notes and it is as demographically (as well as geographically) diverse as it gets. And we'd love nothing more than to dump Blackberries for the iPhone, as long as that iPhone gives us push messaging and alerts on Notes.

This web-based solution won't cut it, though, which is par for course for IBM. Notes is a colossal mess anyway...

The company I work for also uses Lotus Notes and it would need to have the same ability as blackberrys for us to switch which I would love nothing more. The remote wipe feature in v2.0 solves one of the major issues we have so now its just a Lotus Issue keeping us from using them. But Notes is the biggest colossal mess I have ever seen from any package.

As someone who supports a Lotus Notes/Domino email system with very heavy Blackberry device usage in our environment, I think I'm pretty qualified to comment on the previous comment about the disparity of Lotus Notes and iPhone users.

I don't know one single person who doesn't like the iPhone.

We have 2500 users in about 80 countries. About 600 of those currently have Blackberry devices. We have had several inquiries as to whether users could access their email with an iPhone.